Muscle Building Introduction
Bodybuilding is the process of developing muscle fibers through various techniques. It is achieved through muscle conditioning, weight training, increased calorie intake, and resting your body as it repairs and heals itself, before restarting your workout routine.
Workouts are designed to focus on specific muscle categories or groups, and foods are consumed with the intention to build the body’s metabolism and increase overall mass.
This section will focus on weight training for body builders. Weight training develops both strength as well as the size of skeletal muscles.
It uses the force of gravity to oppose the force generated by muscles through contraction. Weight training uses a variety of specialized equipment designed to target specific muscle groups and movements.
Some people refer to weight training as strength training. While they are not exactly the same, they are both similar to each other.
Strength training focuses on increasing muscular strength and size. Weight training is one type of strength training using weights as the primary force to build muscle mass.
The basic principles of weight training are pretty much the same as those of strength training.
It involves a manipulation of the numbers of reps, sets, tempo, exercise types, and weight moved to cause desired increases in strength, endurance, size, or shape.
The specific combination of reps, sets, exercises, and weight depends upon the desires of the body builder. Sets with fewer reps can be performed with heavier weights but have a reduced impact on endurance.
Equipment used in weight training includes barbells, dumbbells, pulleys, and stacks in the form of weight machines or the body’s own weight as in push- ups and chin-ups. Different weights will give different types of resistance.
Weight training also focuses on form performing the movements with the appropriate muscle groups and not transferring the weight to different body parts in order to move great weight.
If you don’t use good form in weight training, you risk muscle injury, which could hinder your overall progress.
Another form of weight training is resistance training.
Resistance training involves the use of elastic or hydraulic resistance to contraction rather than gravity.
When your muscles are resisting a weight, the overall tone of that muscle will grow over time.
If you are a beginner at weight training, you should not just “jump right in”. You need to build up your strength and over-working your muscles can cause more harm than good.
Some of your muscles might be naturally stronger than others. Building up slowly allows muscles to develop appropriate strengths relative to each other.
Most gyms offer the services of a personal trainer that comes with the membership fee.
These trainers can suggest specific workouts for you to begin with, however the routines featured within this guide will help you develop a solid workout quickly and easily.
In the next chapter, I will break down each of the common workout positions and exercises so that you can fully understand how they are done, as well as the muscle group they target.